Pleasure Beach

February 5 – March 6, 2022 | Sammlung Goetz Unter Deck

Since the outbreak of the corona pandemic, clubs in Munich have been largely closed. A melancholic mood has set in, and we wonder if and when we will be able to party like we used to. The Sammlung Goetz uses this situation as an opportunity to present a selection of videos and installations by artists whose work explores club culture from the 1980s to the 2000s. The focus is not only on different musical genres, dance styles and fashions; questions of sexuality, gender and identity are also considered. Young adults and teenagers in particular test and exceed limits during wild club nights, fueled by the sound, the intoxication and the community. The Sammlung Goetz presents the artworks in Unter Deck, a club in Munich established in 2013. Its walls are covered with inscriptions and graffiti, and its worn, imitation leather sofas and scratched up bar counters testify to long club nights, evoking memories of better times.

Artists: Tracey Emin, Nina Könnemann, Mark Leckey, Seth Price and Wolfgang Tillmans

Curator: Cornelia Gockel

Seth Price
Köln Waves/Blues
2005-2008
Single-channel video (Farbe, Ton)
12’
Sammlung Goetz, Media Art, Munich
 

On a long wooden table, located directly opposite the club entrance, stands a large flat screen on which the computer animation Köln Waves/Blues (2005-2008) by Seth Price (*1973) plays. With the same persistent rhythm, a dark gray wave builds up before the viewer’s eyes. The American artist bought a 6-second loop from a company that makes screensaver; he then edited the sequence with color effects and extended it to 12 minutes.
Digitally distorted fragments of a blues session can be heard. A music genre with Afro-American roots, the blues became popular in the USA at the turn of the 20th century, paving the way for several other musical styles, including jazz, soul, funk, rock'n'roll, and also inspiring new directions like hip-hop and R&B. “I've got the blues” is a familiar expression used when one is feeling sad or despondent - sentiments many of us may have felt over the past months when sitting alone in front of our screens.

Mark Leckey
Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore
1999
Single-channel video (color, sound)
14’ 48’’
Sammlung Goetz, Media Art, Munich
 

The large-format projection Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) by British artist Mark Leckey (*1964) is a cinematic collage compiled from found video material depicting the underground club scene in Great Britain of 1970s to 1990s, which the artist digitally altered. The film begins with the disco scene of the 1970s, then traces northern soul and the raves of the 1990s, ending with picturesque images of clouds. Leckey added street scenes populated by skaters and groups of young men. The uniformity of the different clothing and dance styles embody the lifestyle of the youth at the time. In the 1980s, the elite of British hooligans called themselves ‘casuals’ and flaunted their group affiliation by wearing brands like Tacchini, Lacoste, Fila and Fiorucci. Mark Leckey also alludes to this with his title Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore. The film, however, is much more than an anthropological study of the British underground scene. Leckey’s
rearrangement of the found material and its digital distortion—combined with the striking sound collage—makes the film an iconic work situated at the intersection of fine art and pop culture.

Nina Könnemann
Pleasure Beach
2001
Single-channel video (color, sound)
8’ 30’’
Sammlung Goetz, Media Art, Munich

With her video Pleasure Beach (2001)—presented on a Hanterex monitor at the bar—Nina Könnemann (*1971) takes us to an entertainment strip in Blackpool on the west coast of England. The seaside resort is considered the British version of Ballermann and attracts a party-loving audience of all ages, especially in the summer months. Compared to other seaside resorts, the price of accommodation and food in Blackpool is very inexpensive, making it a popular place for bachelor parties. Using a handheld camera, Könnemann captures the intensely heated mood on a stormy night. She mostly follows women who—in excited anticipation—are heavily made up and donning high heels and cheap, short costume dresses, like those one might see at a carnival. They drink alcohol to get in the mood, stage themselves and flirt with the camera. The atmosphere seems to change as the storm approaches. The women frantically rush from palace to place, hoping the night—which began with such promise—will still fulfill their dreams. By the end of the film, the waves are pounding on the promenade, police sirens are blaring, a girl is being held by her friends as she vomits in the street while a brightly lit tram—painted with a skull and crossbones and the words ‘Terror Train’ written on it—plows through the flooded quay like a ghost train. Könnemann named her work Pleasure Beach after the eponymous amusement park in Blackpool. Pleasure Beach is also the title of the exhibition, for it denotes a place of longing that fails to live up to its promise.

Wolfgang Tillmanns
Lights (Body)
2000-2002
Single-channel video (color, sound)
5’
Sammlung Goetz, Media Art, Munich
 

Visible from afar, the installation Lights (Body) (2000-2002) by Wolfgang Tillmans (*1968) is presented on the stage area in front of the club’s empty dance floor. The artist’s first video work, it was created in connection with his early photographs of dancers in a techno club. Lights (Body), in contrast, explores the absence of bodies and focuses on the dramaturgy of the club’s spotlights, the colorful light reflections on a disco ball and the convulsing flashes of a strobe light. Tillmans shot the video during a regular club night on a Saturday. For the audio, he experimented with different soundtracks, opting for Air’s hacker remix Don't Be Light, which sounds like the endless prelude to a song that never progresses, Tilmanns explained in an interview. “It just toys with the idea of expectation.” In our prevailing situation, in which we often feel like we are stuck in an endless loop, Tillman’s video installation awakens happy memories of the intoxicating techno parties of the 1990s in clubs that have long since closed.

Tracey Emin
Why I Never Became a Dancer
1995
Single-channel video (color, sound)
6’ 40’’ Loop
Sammlung Goetz, Media Art, Munich
 

A soundproof door leads from the stage into the club’s small office. With its dim lighting and red walls, it conveys an intimate atmosphere that corresponds to the frank and honest confessions of Tracey Emin (*1963) in her video Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995), which is presented on a monitor in the space. In her film, Emin talks about growing up in the small British seaside town of Margate, her difficulties at school, having sex with older boys and men as a young girl between the ages of 11 and 13 and about the ensuing emptiness she was felt. Later on, she discovered her physical self-
determination while dancing and entered a disco dance competition. But her past eventually caught up with her. The film begins with unsteady Super 8 amateur footage of Margate accompanied by Emin’s narrations about her youth experiences. Yet, in her film, Emin does not present herself as a victim, but describes her development as an act of self-empowerment. Emin left Margate and became a successful artist. In the film’s final sequence, the artist is seen dancing triumphantly to the disco song You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) in a large London studio overlooking the park.